I HAVE been renewing acquaintance with an old friend. As always, it was a rewarding and compelling page-turning experience. It was also thought provoking, making me wonder yet again why so few Australian crime writers make it on to the international stage. Rather than becoming household names they are too often relegated to being the hard-working lasses and lads in the backrooms. They are crime fiction’s equivalent of the supporting cast in Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey. Relegated to  the back rooms; the maids, cooks, grooms, servants, pot-washers, bed-makers and skivvies toiling away, unseen and disregarded by their alleged betters. Continue reading

CRIME fiction is probably the broadest of all literary genres. And nowhere in my recent reading is this better demonstrated than by this beautifully crafted novel. Fine writing from a Grand Prix Litteraire de l’Heroine winner that mystifies and intrigues from the appealing title all the way through to its haunting other worldly conclusion. Whether a crime has been committed is largely left to the reader to decide. A sudden death is the focus of the tale but there are no bloodied bodies, shootings, stabbings, stranglings or similar murderous events. Simply a woman who disappears from the edge of an… Continue reading